A TALK WITH DAN GABLE DURING THE NCAA WRESTLING FINALS
Submitted by: Eddie Goldman/ADCC Wrestling Editor
Posted On 04/01/2003
It was too much to resist, and too good of a story to pass up, so I went over a couple of seats on press row to speak to wrestling legend Dan Gable during the finals of the 2003 NCAA Div. I Wrestling Championships, March 22 at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, MO. At 149 pounds, Eric Larkin of Arizona State was on his way to defeating Jared Lawrence of Minnesota, 10-8, and to earning not only his first national championship, but the award for Outstanding Wrestler of the entire tournament as well.
How do these champion wrestlers compare to those in your day? I asked him. Gable collected his thoughts, and offered the following: 'People are people. It's just a matter of opportunities to learn, to expand, to become better athletes. Today's day and age has a better opportunity because there's more out there in everything. I mean, look at the war. We can see what's going on in the war. So I really feel that between, as far as who could be the most disciplined, probably the guys earlier on. But yet opportunity to be better in something is more now. So there's more distractions, but you kind of equal it out. So I would take old-timers against new-times, and I think it would be a heck of a match. I don't really think there's that much difference that way, except you better be a better wrestler today than you were back then.'
I also asked him his reaction to the victory at 125 by Travis Lee of Cornell. Lee is the first wrestler from Hawaii to win a national championship, and one of the few from an Ivy League school.
'I love that,' replied Gable. 'Because kids then feel like they have more places to go. Yet we're losing too many colleges, but yet they don't have to just think they can go here. They can actually go a place they may want to go, and accomplish both academically and athletically. And that's important.'
There is an electricity, an excitement that makes the NCAA's a very special event. Gable also gave his thoughts on why this is so.
'What really makes it special is when the athletes perform,' he observed. 'When they're out there, both guys thinking they can win, and they have great matches. So far, the finals have been almost that way. And that makes for great viewing, makes for great promotion of our sport. It's obviously on TV, the finals. And so we can actually promote this to a higher level because that's where we got to go. We got to go to a higher level. Because there's a lot of people out there that are pushing what they want on their agendas. And we got to make sure everybody knows that we have a good agenda already. We have a good product. But we're looking even to improve it.'
Another feature of the 2003 NCAA's was the series of victories by freshmen. Later, I asked him about this right after the championship performance by Oklahoma State's redshirt freshman Jake Rosholt at 184. He had lost to his opponent, Scott Barker of Missouri, 9-1 in the Big 12 finals two weeks earlier, but then defeated Barker in the NCAA finals by a 13-5 major decision.
'It's all the frame of mentality. You don't know when you're going to get it,' explained Gable. 'I coached this little kid to a national title in my last year, Jessie Whitmer,' referring to the 118-pounds senior Whitmer, who had never even been an All-American until he won his sole national championship in 1997, Gable's last season as coach.
'He didn't get that mentality until halfway through the tournament, three-quarters of the way through the tournament,' continued Gable. 'And I'm sure this Jake Rosholt developed that mentality. He's probably had it before at one time. But you lose it, and then all of a sudden you pick it back up for some reason right during the tournament. It makes you look good as a coach, but the bottom line is, you don't know when it's going to happen. And it happened right here, and that's what counts.'
I commented that while Rosholt unexpectedly went to the finals and won, higher-ranked wrestlers at Oklahoma State, which won the 2003 team title, such as 197-pounder Muhammed Lawal, 174-pounder Chris Pendleton, and 165-pounder Tyrone Lewis, did not go to finals. Lawal and Pendleton each finished third, while Lewis finished fifth.
'It's just all of a sudden the kid realized he could do it,' Gable said of Rosholt's surprise win. 'There's a lot of them out there. Even if you look at John Smith and Michael Jordan, they were great. But they weren't superstars. And then all of a sudden they became superstars.'
-- Eddie Goldman,
wrestlingeditor@yahoo.com
